POSTED MARCH 15 , 2003

MERLE YODER  won his first Mini Stock feature of the season on a warm Saturday night at the Mottville Speedway as he went 4 wide in first turn and took the lead after one lap and then held off Barry Harrison for the win!

Yoder took home $110 on the night and after Harrison in the 25 lapper it was George Polly, Jon Fitzpatrick, John Yoder, Eric Root, John Fitzpatrick and Brian Mosurak.

Jon Fitzpatrick won the dash while Harrison took the heat.

Two time Mini Thunder Car defending champion Fred Garrett won his 4^th feature of the season with a 25 lap victory over Richard Allbee, Chuck Hall and season points leader Derk Sargent. Garrett also won the heat.

Defending Pro Stock season points champion Paul Scott won his 4^th feature of the season over Jeff Brunt and padded his season points lead in a 15 lapper.

We had a season high 9 MS and 15 cars total and the largest crowd of the season on the warmest night of the season!

Joe Gaylord drove from Chicago to race a MS but blew the engine hot lapping.

Garrett was sent to the tail twice in the MTC feature for violating the lead rule.

We registered 7 new cars!

Big news of this past week is that we have booked the Rascal Outlaw Winged Sprints out of Illinois to 4 shows-June 14,28, July 12 and September 6! They have 16 cars and expect 10-12 at our shows! We last had them in 1996 and they put on a tremendous show and are extremely fast!

We have also reduced the number of the nights for the Pro Stock class in 2003 to 38, 10 of them in March. Starting in late April the PS class will run Sundays only until the end of September, when their season will end. For 2004 we should be able to cut the PS class down to about 22-24 nights. This seems to be what the PS drivers want it allows us to pay better on Sunday nights and to save valuable resources for our SS and MS classes.

We still have not a street Stock show up but we know many are in the process of being built and we certainly expect some next week! A reminder when it comes to street stocks-READ THE RULES!! These cars are very stock and all SS cars will be inspected before racing and if found illegal will run PS or not run!

Saw Susan Beers after the races and this has been a very tough week for her to put it mildly! Her father, Danny Zimmerman, was in Kalamazoo hospital (Bronson) this past week with heart troubles but is now home and doing well. Friday night her brother, Dennis Zimmerman, had an auto accident between Mottville and Union and rolled his car 5 times and suffered head injuries but is now home! Was thrilled to hear both are recovering well!

Our 2003 schedule is about all set now. We may be booking some shows with an Indiana group of vintage modifieds including John Fitzpatrick but that should be about it. As it stands now we have no less than 22 outside shows! Should be an exciting season!

Sunday is supposed to be even warmer than tonight was! Believe it or not the mud was really not bad at all! I expected far worse! The water hole at the gate to the pits was actually dry!

We had 8 new light bulbs installed on track poles last week and 2 to go but the 8 new lights really made a nice difference! We have a new transformer at the track and now the lights are brighter!

Talked to Dave Logan this week and he should be racing with us soon, he is still deciding between PS and SS. Charley Krontz getting closer with his SS!